Petrov, Aleksandr Karpovich

Born Nov. 23 (Dec. 5), 1875, in Kazan; died Nov. 21, 1935, in Moscow. Participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia and the struggle for Soviet power in Arkhangel’sk. Member of the Communist Party from 1898. Son of a worker.

A worker, Petrov was involved in the revolutionary movement from 1893 in Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod (present-day Gorky). He was repeatedly arrested and exiled. In 1898 he was an organizer and member of the Social Democratic Workers’ Committee in Arkhangel’sk, and in 1903 a member of the committee of the RSDLP. He served in the army from 1905 to 1907 and participated in the work of the Social Democratic military organization of Dvinsk. In 1908 he began party work in Arkhangel’sk and in 1917 was a member of the committee of the RSDLP(B) and the soviet; he was a leader in the establishment of Soviet power in the city in February 1918.

After the interventionists occupied Arkhangel’sk in August 1918, Petrov began underground work. Arrested and sent to the island of Mud’iug in the White Sea in April 1919, he was later taken to France with a group of hostages. He returned to Soviet Russia in 1920 and worked first in Severoles (state-owned lumber trust) and then in the Society of Old Bolsheviks. His memoirs were called A Worker-Bolshevik in the Underground (1925).